The Mouth: Why I keep coming back to this Sydney restaurant, Cafe Paci

Newtown’s Cafe Paci has a menu that basically consists of comfort food you’d never make at home. For The Mouth, it’s like coming home.

Dependable, delicious: Cafe Paci. Picture: Supplied

There is an old tradition among those who believe in the Seven Deadly Sins that the one truly unforgivable moral crime is despair.

The theory goes that even if someone goes off a-killing or a-coveting, so long as he or she retains a glimmer of hope that they might be redeemed, the door to salvation is not closed off and things could still come right. But the sinner who loses hope and detaches himself even from the possibility of things getting better?

Well, as the saying goes, no soup for you.

This thought was much on this column’s mind a few weeks ago when the weather was interminably grim and all of Sydney seemed, if not in a state of despair, then in an absolute certifiable funk.

That bread . there’s plenty to love at Cafe Paci. Picture: Supplied

One local writer asked if there was any point to Sydney if it was just going to be a sodden and congested mess, and in our darker moments (yours too, we suspect) we may have momentarily agreed.

And yet! What potato and molasses bread from yonder window breaks?

Tye menu is hard to categorise … but think comfort food you’d never make at home. Picture: Supplied

Amid all of this, the Mouth family decided to book into Cafe Paci on Newtown’s King Street restaurant strip to get out of the house and celebrate a minor win.

This narrow eatery, with its hard-to-categorise menu that basically consists of comfort food you’d never make at home, has long been a favourite. If memory serves it’s the first place we went after a pandemic lockdown ended because we wanted to support it, and we even tried our hand making their ocean trout XO sauce for gnocchi when everything was shut down and they put it on their website.

Anyway, on this drizzly night, Paci was in full flight with every table full: a loudmouth art dealer here, a wholesome first date couple over there.

The point is, people were not giving up on Sydney – they were happily tucking into the aforementioned sweet and sticky bread, devilled eggs, grilled King Island prawns, and a brilliant every-night-of-the-week ravioli with pork and black vinegar and fermented chilli (recipe, please).

Cafe Paci has been around for a number of years and we are always happy to revisit. It’s both a comfy gourmet local and the place you would take serious out-of-town eaters who want to try something that is uniquely Sydney.

And the best bit is, unlike so much in this town, the weather doesn’t have to be grand for it to work its magic and cheer you up.

The Mouth is an anonymous critic and bon vivant who pays his own way around Sydney and beyond.